Recently, demands for a high-resolution and high-quality video have increased in various fields of applications. As a video has higher resolution and higher quality, an amount of information on the video increases more.
Accordingly, when video information is transferred using media such as existing wired or wireless broadband lines or video information is stored in existing storage media, the information transfer cost and the information storage cost increase.
High-efficiency video compressing techniques can be used to effectively transfer, store, and reproduce information on high-resolution and high-quality videos.
Inter prediction and intra prediction can be used to enhance video compression efficiency. In the inter prediction, pixel values of a current picture are predicted with reference to information of other pictures. In the intra prediction, pixel values of a current picture are predicted using inter-pixel relationships in the same picture.
When the inter prediction is carried out, a video encoder and a video decoder can perform a prediction process on the basis of a reference picture list specifying reference pictures which can be used for a current block (current picture).
Information for constructing a reference picture list can be transmitted from the video encoder to the video decoder. The video decoder can construct a reference picture list on the basis of the information received from the video encoder and can effectively perform the inter prediction.